Instantly Rich Natives Face Shaky Future

Village Journey

By Thomas R. Berger Hill And Wang Publishers, 202 Pages, $16.95

February 02, 1986|By Reviewed by Michael Dorris, Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College and the author of ``Native Americans: 500 Years After.``

In 1971, under intense pressure from the State of Alaska, domestic and international oil companies and conservationists, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). On one hand, ANCSA purported to clarify and determine for all times the division and ownership of hundreds of millions of acres of federally administered lands in the 49th state, while on the other, it set the stage for the construction of an immensely profitable oil pipeline bisecting the nation`s largest state.

``Village Journey`` is the story of ANCSA 14 years after its passage and six years before its limited protection is due to end. Berger, a former British Columbia Supreme Court judge and now a professor of law, traveled throughout the small Eskimo, Aleut and Indian villages of Alaska asking questions and listening to voluntary testimony. Today, Alaskan Natives find themselves the victims of legislation they did not initiate and do not, in growing appreciation of its predictable consequences, want.

Since its purchase from Russia in 1867, much of Alaska`s territory remained in uncontested possession of the various Native groups who had used it from time immemorial. Eskimos (Yup`iks and Inupiats), Aleuts, and Indians

(Athabascans, Tlingits, Haidas and Tsimshians), collectively known in the state as ``Natives,`` for the most part were free to follow traditional patterns of subsistence across the vast, sparsely populated terrain. This relatively uncomplicated picture ended with the discovery of large deposits of crude oil, especially near Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. Enormous grants of land were needed as easements for pipeline construction and consequently clear land titles, heretofore alien concepts in most of Alaska, were required.

Historically in this country, Native Americans derive rights to their territory through an international legal concept known as Aboriginal Claim. Only the federal government, normally through treaty negotiation, can extinguish that claim and, when a settlement is reached, Indian lands or reservations exist as ``domestic, dependent nations`` within the United States. Indian country, as this territory has been called, is not a part of any state but rather, in many respects, is dealt with by Washington on a government to government basis. Treatied lands can be leased but not permanently lost, and their inhabitants hold dual citizenship in their tribes and in the United States.

In 1970 Alaskan Natives held an aboriginal claim to 90 percent of Alaska and constituted 20 percent of the state`s population. The unexploited natural wealth in economic terms of the territory they used and inhabited was beyond calculation; its value to them as ancestral homelands was priceless. Under the provisions of ANCSA, Native Alaskans born before the passage of the Act (1971) would receive almost half a billion dollars in noninflation proof compensation, title to 40,000,000 acres (10 percent of their claim area), and a period of 20 years of financial and territorial protection. Their lands and monies would be administered through 12 regional profit corporations and more than 200 village corporations over which exclusively Native shareholders would exercise theoretical control.

In only two regional corporations is shareholders` equity higher in value now than it was in 1981, yet in 1991 all special status ends and Native people are expected to wheel and deal in the marketplace along with the multinationals--General Motors and American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

In exchange for this largess, all Native claims to Alaska were extinguished, all special rights of subsistence hunting and fishing were eliminated, and all inherent cultural differences were ignored. It was glibly assumed that in 20 years, village-based, non-English speaking traditional peoples would choose and be able to become financial tycoons as comfortable on Wall Street as they were on the tundra.